Ordinary Magic Glass
The expression "Venetian glass" has become a household word. It is used in the appreciation of the artistic merit of glass. And it is not by chance that the largest…

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Luca della Robbia - devotional service to art
The whole long life of Luke della Robbia was dedicated to serving the arts. The sculptor was born in Florence in 1399 or 1400. He made many works that rightfully…

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How did the masters of the Italian Renaissance study
Verrocchio, Mantegna, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo. The greatest geniuses. What bright individuals and how much they differ from each other! What unites the unsurpassed masters of the time, which is…

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Venetian landscape painters of the 18th century
By the beginning of the 18th century, the once mighty Venice had lost its significance as the political center of the Mediterranean, becoming a peculiar center of pilgrimage. Rich travelers…

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Caravaggio - "an excellent rival of nature"
At the turn of the XVI – XVII centuries in Italy, famous for great painters, poets, scientists and humanists, a very peculiar artist appeared. His paintings caused a genuine sensation.…

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Eugene Delacroix – Goethe’s Faust lithographs

In the 1820s, the artist Eugene Delacroix was in the prime of his creative power. He is 30 years old, he is a recognized master, who created the paintings that put him among the best artists of France: “Dante and Virgil”, “The Massacre at Chios”, “The Execution of Marino Faliero”, “The Death of Sardanapala”.

In them, Delacroix most fully reflected the ideas of progressive romanticism that prevailed at that time in French painting, to the transmission of historical truth expressed by a vivid, emotional language, which compels the emperor to sympathize with the strong, integral and passionate characters. Continue reading

Camille Corot: “I write with my heart”

The large, half a century long, creative life of the French artist Camille Corot (1796–1875) was, as it were, subject to the change of seasons. In the winter months he worked in the Paris workshop, often visiting the opera and the conservatory. But the happiness of communicating with wildlife meant for the master incomparably more than visiting museums and concert halls. Every year with the onset of spring, he went on a journey through various regions of France to write sketches. Many of them have become pearls of plein-air painting. Continue reading

Diego Rivera – the great Mexican painter

When the Great October Socialist Revolution took place in Russia, a revolutionary struggle was going on in Mexico for seven years. Armed peasants opposed the dictatorship of the rich and the priests, the landowners who seized fertile land, against the dominance of foreign capitalists. The war was unusually stubborn and cruel. The reactionary militia malice, American troops twice invaded Mexico. The bourgeoisie traitorously turned its weapons against the peasant detachments led by the popular leaders Francisco Villa and Emiliano Zapata. The rebels showed heroism and won great victories.

In February 1917, a constitution was adopted. Continue reading

Antique Cologne
Cologne ... Many have heard about this German city on the Rhine, a major center of medieval European culture. The well-known Cologne Cathedral is an unsurpassed monument of Gothic architecture.…

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Chinese classical painting
Painting of China, flourishing in the era of the Middle Ages - IV – XIX centuries of our era, it was not by chance that it took an honorable place…

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Two portraits of the actress Strepetova
There are destinies that strike the imagination with unusualness and inner completeness — such is the life of Pelageya Antipevna Strepetova (1850–1903), difficult and bright, full of dramatic turns. At…

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